Jean Marie Lehn

Jean Marie Lehn, 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was born in Rosheim, France, in 1939.

He graduated in Organic Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg in 1960 and obtained his PhD at Harvard, in the United States, in 1963 with Robert B. Woodward, one of the greatest experts in organic synthesis of the time. Back in France he devoted himself to the study of physical chemistry. In 1968 he synthesised the cryptands, special molecules capable of capturing ions and thus modifying their own physico-chemical properties. These studies accelerated the birth of so-called “supramolecular chemistry”. For these results he received the Nobel Prize together with Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pedersen.

In 1970 he became professor of Chemistry at the Louis Pasteur University of Strasbourg. Since 1979 he has also taught at the Collège de France. Since 1985 he has been a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

His Nobel autobiography can be read at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1987/lehn-autobio…